Regardless of how long you’ve been living in your current home, there will be situations in which moving out becomes necessary. Whether you need to relocate due to your career or because your family is growing, you will need to sell your home in the process.
Apart from being an emotional endeavor, selling your home can also be tedious if you are not prepared for it. There’s a lot you need to take care of as you start to enter the next phase in your life. In any case, you want the sale to benefit you in the long term.
With this in mind, you need to focus your time and effort on getting a good price for your home so you can move out with enough money to fuel your next home purchase. Here’s what you can do to sell your home for the best possible price and terms.
1. Research your market
Before you decide on selling your home, you need to know if the real estate market provides the best opportunity to do so. Numerous factors help you determine if it’s the best time to sell. For one, there’s the current supply and demand situation. If the supply exceeds demand, then homeowners will need to compete against each other in attracting motivated buyers. In this case, home prices take a dip.
Homeowners have greater leverage when there’s a low supply of available listings while demand is high. Homes in this market situation often sell well above asking prices. From this, you might as well get your home listed when supply is lower relative to demand.
In addition, you will also need to check if the market has become affordable for home buyers. One way you can gauge this is to check the average interest rate. In the case of the housing market in Toronto right now, the rates have reached historic lows as a fallout from the lockdowns caused by the pandemic.
Buyers see this as the perfect opportunity to shop for their dream homes. In your case, you can use this situation to your advantage.
2. Know the average sales price in your area
Apart from looking at the big picture, you must also check your immediate community. This is crucial as you want to sell your home at a competitive price. It’s just a matter of knowing the average price of homes more or less similar to yours. This allows you to find out the fair value of your home and come up with a realistic asking price. In the real estate process, this is known as comparative market analysis (CMA), and you can do it yourself so you can set a proper price.
There are numerous ways you can conduct a CMA. For one, you can check out real estate listing sites and search for properties that have the same size, number of rooms, and amenities as yours.
Doing this on your own can be a tedious and time-consuming process, and you may want to hire a professional who can do a pre-appraisal on your property. That way, you can get a better idea of how much you should sell your property for.
3. Handle a few repairs
If you are going to sell your home for the most money, you might want to fix any issues that could pull down the final price. Buyers can use the inspection contingency to check your home for any defects you were unable to disclose.
While there’s a good chance a buyer will waive the inspection contingency just to lock in on your home, you still need to prepare for extra cautious buyers. It’s always best to repair anything that has the potential to reduce your home’s resale value.
These may include water damage, leaky pipes, and broken windows. You must also check your HVAC system if it’s working properly and fill in cracks and crevices on interior and exterior walls. By doing these repairs, you can prepare your home for the market and avoid knocking off value during an appraisal.
4. Apply value-add improvements
Adding value to your home is not just a matter of fixing what’s broken. It also involves adding enhancements that can attract motivated buyers. Today’s generation of buyers want homes that match their criteria for comfort and convenience. So, investing on a few improvements can add to the final price of your home. In addition, it can also sell your home faster, especially if these amenities are what buyers want.
You need to include modern amenities that cater to tech-savvy buyers. To start, you might want to swap outdated bulbs with energy-efficient LED lighting. For a massive resale value, you might want to remodel your kitchen and replace your flooring with hardwood. You can also install a remote-controlled garage door, a sunroof, and a wooden deck.
These improvements can be costly, but they can nudge the selling price by a thousand dollars or more. That is more than enough to cover the costs of these enhancements.
5. Know how to navigate a negotiation
Once you have listed your home and started to get offers, you need to know how you can negotiate a better price.
Expect tough negotiations with a buyer that insists on purchasing below the list price. In this case, a good strategy to use is offering your home at your list price. Stand your ground even if they propose their “best” counteroffer.
The worst-case scenario is when they decide to back away from the negotiation. However, there’s still a good chance another buyer agrees with your price, especially if they haven’t had any luck finding their ideal home.
If you are going to sell your home this year, you should do the work to secure a good deal. Even though there is high demand of homes right now, you can’t expect things to work out for the best in the months to come. With these you should be able to get the most money from the sale regardless of how the market is performing right now.